Education, society and politics in Central Asia

Post-Soviet education, part 1: Russia

By happy coincidence, I’ve read a number of articles recently looking at education in a number of the post-Soviet countries. Below is an interesting story about Russia, written just before Putin’s re-“election” as President, and it also touches on higher education.

An “educational revolution” is transforming Russia’s society and economy, Russian Prime Minister and presidential hopeful Vladimir Putinwrote in an article published on Monday in the Izvestia daily.

“Russia’s main hope is a high level of education, especially for our young people,” Putin wrote.

Fifty-seven percent of Russians between 25 and 35 years old have higher educations, a level matched only by Japan, South Korea and Canada, Putin said in the article.

“Demand for education is skyrocketing” in the 15-25 age group, with 80 percent of young men and women aspiring to or receiving higher education, he wrote.

Even if the Russian economy is at times unable to absorb so many professionals, “there is no way back,” Putin wrote. “It’s not people who should try to adjust themselves to the existing structure of economy and labor market – it’s economy that should change to allow citizens with high level of education and high demands to find a decent job.”

While the Russian constitution guarantees the right to higher education free-of-charge, the lackluster showing of Russian universities in recent global rankings has triggered a spate of national discussion.

Not a single Russian institution is included in the top 200 of the 2011-2012 Times of London Higher Education rankings. Only two Russian institutions have been included in the rating, Moscow State University in the top 300 and Saint Petersburg State University in the top 400.

Foreign rankings have been repeatedly criticized by Russia’s top education officials and university staff as lacking fairness, objectivity and transparency. Education Minister Andrei Fursenko has said he believes a lack of information about programs and graduates from Russian universities provided to rating agencies is partly to blame for their poor showing.

In August, Putin called for the urgent modernization of Russia’s higher education system so that it meets the demands of today. He promised to allocate some 70 billion rubles ($2.4 billion) to create an innovative educational infrastructure in Russian universities in the next five years.

Visualising the blog

The current icon for my blog is this stunning building, which these days houses the Kazakh British Technical University in the centre of Almaty, Kazakhstan. In Soviet times, it was the National Parliament building. You gotta love how history turns out!